InsaneJournal

Current mood:	naughty
Current music:	HIM - Salt in Our Wounds, Thulsa Doom version
Entry tags:	stand alone fic

Heritage
Title: The Doyle Problem
Rated: G
Pairing: none
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes / House MD crossover
Sherlock Holmes belongs to the Doyle estate. House MD belongs to belongs to Bad Hat Harry productions and its partners.

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A completely non-supernatural story! No Mythos, no vampires, no nothing. Instead more of a what if...

This is not truly a stand-alone story nor is it a chapter in one. It's the first piece of a connected series of shorter stories

This was written just now. It has been edited.

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“This was my mother’s, Greg,” Blythe House had said. “It was written by my great uncle. It was found in his things when he’d disappeared the first time. My grandfather kept it secret. Surely you can see why, with the whole Doyle problem.”

Dr. Gregory House had looked at the pages his mother had spread on the table. They both wore protective gloves. Upon seeing the name scrawled on the pages he marveled they weren’t wearing masks as well.

“I see you realize,” she said. “Your father never knew I had these. I couldn’t do that to you as well. You’re family.”

“Are there any others?” House asked, awed.

His mother shook her head. “My mother kept them; she willed them to the British Museum when she died. This was the only one I dared to keep. I’m guessing they’re under lock and key somewhere, if they even still exist. The whole Doyle problem, you understand.”

“The whole Doyle problem…” House had said.

“The whole Doyle problem,” he said now, muttering it under his breath. The headlines on Google News were damning. It seemed those manuscripts his grandmother had willed to the British Museum hadn’t been destroyed after all.

The precious manuscripts were finally seeing the light of day. It was a harsh, confused light. If the proof could be believed then Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a fraud.

House knew the proof could be believed. He’d seen it.

“Doyle was a fraud,” he said aloud.

Four faces in the Diagnostics office looked up in incredulity, four fellows doing nothing. “What?” asked Chase.

“Manuscripts hidden in the British Museum just turned up,” House explained, not bothering to do more than skim the article. He knew what it said. “Doyle stole Sherlock Holmes.”

“Stole him?” asked Thirteen.

“Stuck his name on stories handed to him from the original author,” House said. “Changed some details to make things more believable. Published them under his own name.”

“It’s a hoax,” Foreman said. He was reading the article on his phone. “Has to be. The Museum claims the manuscripts were signed by John Watson, MD.”

“Of course it’ll be hard to prove,” House went on. “The only manuscripts they found will be the unpublished adventures, maybe even the case of the giant rat of Sumatra, I always wondered about that one. They can’t claim anything definitive until they find one of the published adventures in Dr. Watson’s own hand. Unless of course they figure out who donated the manuscripts and contact the remaining family.”

“How do you know the manuscripts were donated?” Foreman asked. “I can’t find anything on it.”

House smiled with a calculating look and went back to scrolling. Maybe he needed to call his mother.

End